From Rome to Home

Happy end to the Christmas season to everyone! We pray that you were able to encounter moments of silence, stillness, and the peace of God’s presence amidst the business and distractions of the holiday season.

I am sharing about our visit to Rome for the Jubilee of Missions with FMC. Rome was such a blessed and grace-filled time for our family, and we are deeply grateful for the gift of being able to go!

I decided to share four ways that our trip connected deeply to our family’s spiritual journey, and to our friends and ministries back here in General Cepeda.

1. St. Francis of Assisi and St. Michael. Every year, Marcos (my husband) and I pray about a special area of focus the Lord wants us to have for our marriage and family. We call this our “rally cry” for the year. This year, it had a lot to do with the special formation of prayer for our children, as well as being more intentional about giving testimony to our children to the ways that God is answering our family’s and others’ prayers and providing for our needs.

About mid-year, one of the prayers we felt called to teach our children was the St. Michael’s prayer. We started teaching them this prayer in the spring and added it to our nighttime routine. Throughout the year, St. Michael kept popping up for me in different ways and on different occasions. This past September, Marcos and I were both invited separately by different friends to participate in the “St. Michael’s Lent.”

I had not heard of it before, but saw that it was on the Hallow app and decided to follow along the journey with the prayers and be accountable to my friend who invited me to do it. Throughout the journey, the recordings focused on the Seven Deadly Sins and Heavenly Virtues, miraculous stories of St. Michael and the heavenly hosts (including one in Rome), but because this devotion was started by St. Francis of Assisi, each day we learned about a different story of St. Francis’ Life.

This 40-day “Lent” ended the day before we left for Rome, on St Michael’s Feast Day!

It was a beautiful way for both Marcos and I to prepare spiritually for the pilgrimage to Rome, and it made me very excited to go to Assisi, where we would be able to spend some time in prayer, beautiful nature, and reflection about the life of St. Francis and St. Clare that we so diligently followed the 40 days leading up to the trip.

St. Francis also popped into our lives in a deeper way during the nine days leading up to Rome, because the parish in General Cepeda is called St. Francis of Assisi, and his feast day on October 4th is greatly celebrated there in town every year. Every evening for nine days leading up to the feast day, there is a walking pilgrimage and rosary through our town to different locations where a family hosts a mass outside of their home. Different parish groups teach about him, and the whole community celebrates his life.

The novena is prayed, asking the intercession of St. Francis each year, and many people in the entire town dedicate their evenings to this tradition, ending with a huge celebration on the feast day. The FMC missionary community was very supportive in helping with these pilgrimages through town and attending the evening masses each day leading up to the feast.

When we shared with the youth group and with the local “lay Franciscans” in our town that we were going on pilgrimage to Assisi, they were very excited and wrote down lots of petitions for us to carry on pilgrimage to the holy place of their beloved St. Francis.

2. St. Carlo Acutis! During our time in Assisi, we also got to visit the place where the body of St. Carlo Acutis is held. Joaquin, our son, has been very interested this year in learning about St. Carlo Acutis through books and listening to the “Saints Alive” podcast! This was a very special place for him to visit because he was able to make the connection from his stories to the tomb and museum of the life of St. Carlo Acutis. This was also special for our youth group in General Cepeda that we have been working with for these three years, as in the summer camp this year, they focused on sharing about the lives of young saints like Carlo Acutis. They even had special t-shirts printed out with his image on them, and became devoted to him after they learned about his life and his love for Jesus. We shared with them that we were going to visit the place where his body was, and they gave us some of their petitions as well to carry on our pilgrimage.

3. The Missionary Community and the Early Church—the third area of grace that blessed me is bunched into these three points: the encounters we had with our FMC missionary brothers and sisters, the memories we made with our teammates Toño and Mari who traveled with us from General Cepeda, and the catacombs and church tours we did where we learned about the underground church in Rome and the faithful who died because of persecution.

4. The Holy House in Loreto and the Domestic Church—the last place I want to share is our visit to the Holy House of Loreto. It is said to be the home of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus, which was carried there by angels. You can read about it! We weren’t sure about making this trip, but after praying about it, we made plans to go! It’s something we desired to do since we read about it in the “Consecration to St Joseph” devotional book several years ago. Simply put, it was a beautiful, peaceful place. We were praying for all of the intentions sent to us, and our family prayers connected deeply to what I mentioned in the beginning about our “rally cry” for the year. There are no words to explain some of the special ways God touched our hearts during that visit.